Today, many industries which utilize lumber are concerned with escalating lumber prices. To reduce material costs, these industries are becoming increasingly interested in conserving materials through the use of reused or refurbished lumber which was previously used to build a permanent or temporary structure. Once the useful life of a structure expires, it is disassembled and the lumber therefrom is used elsewhere.
Typically, when lumber is disassembled from an existing structure, the lumber retains foreign material embedded therein and projecting therefrom, such as nails, wire, metallic fasteners and the like.
In the past, this foreign material was manually removed from the lumber, such as with a hammer or pry bar, prior to reusing the lumber. Alternatively, the foreign material was driven into the lumber with a hammer to afford a flush surface along the lumber. However, these past systems for repairing reusable lumber are extremely labor intensive and, heretofore, have proven not cost effective.
One exemplary industry, albeit not the only one, relates to the pallet industry for mass distribution of products packaged in large quantities. Throughout distribution and storage, these products are stored and transported upon pallets in bulk quantities. Each pallet is engaged by a forklift to move the produce upon the pallet. As is known, each pallet is formed with upper and lower decks formed of multiple pieces of lumber or particle board, aligned side by side and spaced slightly apart from one another. The upper and lower decks are separated by and nailed to upper and lower edges of stringers, such as two by fours. The stringers are arranged perpendicular to the top and bottom floors and are oriented on their edges to afford the maximum distance (approximately 4 inches) between the top and bottom decks. Typically, a pallet includes three stringers, two of which extend along opposite ends of the deck and one of which extends along the center of the deck.
As the pallets are used, they become worn with broken boards in the top and bottom decks. To conserve lumber, older broken pallets are dismantled and the unbroken deck boards are reused to build new pallets. Generally, pallets are disassembled upon conventionally known disassembling machines which include a conveying surface along which the pallet is driven. The disassembling machine includes multiple V-shaped tapered arms or wedges which are mounted upon the conveying surface and aligned parallel to the conveyance direction. The tapered arms are oriented with the apex of the V-shape directed toward the upstream end of the conveying surface. Each V-shaped wedge includes an outer tip which is received between the upper and lower decks of the pallet to be disassembled. Generally, pairs of tapered wedges are formed to receive stringers therebetween. As the pallet is driven along the conveying surface, the V-shaped wedge forces the upper and lower decks in opposite directions, thereby causing the upper and lower decks to be separated from the stringer immediately adjacent the wedge arms. This process is repeated for each stringer until the upper and lower decks are completely separated from one another and from the stringers. The resulting lumber includes individual top and bottom deck boards and individual stringers having nails projecting from but embedded in top and bottom edges thereof.
Heretofore, if the stringers were to be reused, it was necessary to manually drive each nail into the stringer with a hammer or pull it from the stringer. This process was unduly labor intensive and not cost effective.
A need remains within the reusable lumber industry for a machine capable of automatically refurbishing pieces of lumber having foreign material embedded therein to afford smooth edges along the lumber. The present invention is intended to meet this need.